The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 120, October, 1867: A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and PoliticsVarious
General
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 120, October, 1867: A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
"Try, for my sake!" says the Captain, "it 's so interestin'. You 've
undertook a good deal, but whatever consarns you consarns me."
"Well, I won't wacillate no more,--not if it plagues you!" And the widow
looked fondly in his face, and then, quite supporting herself upon his arm,
she drooped her eyelids modestly and resumed.
INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT.
There is an American lady living at Hartford, in Connecticut, whom the
United States has permitted to be robbed by foreigners of $200,000. Her
name is Harriet Beecher Stowe. By no disloyal act has she or her family
forfeited their right to the protection of the government of the United
States. She pays her taxes, keeps the peace, and earns her livelihood by
honest industry; she has reared children for the service of the
Commonwealth; she was warm and active for her country when many around her
were cold or hostile;--in a word, she is a good citizen.
More than that: she is an illustrious citizen. The United States stands
higher to-day in the regard of every civilized being in Christendom because
she lives in the United States. She is the only woman yet produced on the
continent of America to whom the world assigns equal rank in literature
with the great authoresses of Europe. If, in addition to the admirable
talents with which she is endowed, she had chanced to possess one more,
namely, the excellent gift of plodding, she had been a consummate artist,
and had produced immortal works. All else she has,--the seeing eye, the
discriminating intelligence, the sympathetic mind, the fluent word, the
sure and happy touch; and these gifts enabled her to render her country the
precise service which it needed most. Others talked about slavery: she made
us _see_ it. She showed it to us in its fairest and in its foulest aspect;
she revealed its average and ordinary working. There never was a fairer nor
a kinder book than "Uncle Tom's Cabin"; for the entire odium of the
revelation fell upon the Thing, not upon the unhappy mortals who were born
and reared under its shadow. The reader felt that Legree was not less, but
far more, the victim of slavery than Uncle Tom, and the effect of the book
was to concentrate wrath upon the system which tortured the slave's body
and damned the master's soul. Wonderful magic of genius! The hovels and
cotton-fields which this authoress scarcely saw she made all the world see,
and see more vividly and more truly than the busy world can ever see remote
objects with its own unassisted eyes. We are very dull and stupid in what
does not immediately concern us, until we are roused and enlightened by
such as she. Those whom we call "the intelligent," or "the educated," are
merely the one in ten of the human family who by some chance learned to
read, and thus came under the influence of the class whom Mrs. Stowe
represents.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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